A busy week so far, no rowing but plenty of beekeeping. A day at the local association's teaching apiary was seriously interesting and absorbing. Lots to do - I was there from 10am to 3pm - but the hours flew by. I'm beekeeping solo at our own apiaries for a few weeks, and also refurbing some hive parts on the side. Hard work, and messy!
The bees were a bit discombobulated by having a nice clear floor and brood box. It smells funny! It's the wrong colour!
Spring was crazy this year - hot and sunny, with heaps of flowers and thus a huge nectar flow. We had a big harvest from four hives. No sign of the "June gap", with plenty of wildflowers, clover etc in bloom.
21 May 2024
Postcard again, just to keep this alive...
Today I'm heading off to the bees, to do a bit of gardening, just trimming back the weeds from the hive entrances. Yesterday we had a Plan that quickly fell apart because the bees had other ideas. We were moving the two surviving hives to our other site. We had a loan of the tractor and trailer, and P had been the night before to tape up the entrances. Several hundred foragers apparently said "WTF?!" and forced their way out, only to be unable to get back in. Siiiigh.
So we decided to let them stay until the winter and went ahead with an inspection. Which revealed that a very weak colony that had been merged with a stronger one, had somehow acquired a strong queen. So we had two colonies, each with a queen - separated by a queen excluder - thriving under one roof. Another heavy sigh. We set up another hive next door, after fetching a roof from the distant shed - because of course we had previously removed all extraneous equipment from the site. Siiiiigh.
So instead of having just one site with all our hives on it, we still have two sites, and an extra hive.
Google are at it again with their death threats. So I've signed in and will make yet another pointless post so I don't lose the nostalgia hit I get from reading about life in the 2010s.
No photos from today, but I got an emergency plea this morning just as I'd fired up the kettle to say a crew was one short and could I hurry down. So I hurried and we went out in the teeth of a stiff wind as far as the old harbour, then battled our way back again as it turned properly rough. As ever we were glad we made the effort, and it justified the bacon rolls Peter had cooked up in the shed.
Afterwards I went up and checked the mousetraps in the woodlands apiary shed. Two of three had mice; the one that didn't was up on the bench, which is a good sign. That takes the total so far to 14. The next experiment is peppermint oil, which is supposed to act as a deterrent. I've got some essential oil and today got a spray bottle, so next visit I'll give the place a good spray.
I'm going rowing again on Monday morning, though we're short one crew member. For some reason everyone is busy that day, can't imagine why.
... to yet another trip down memory lane. Oddly enough, I did actually stay the night once in a place on Memory Lane, it was called Kindred Spirits. There you go.
Anyway, it's been so long since I last posted that I nearly lost the blog again. But after going round in a few more circles and kicking in a few more doors, I've managed to save it once more. Such fun.
I've just been moving some old backups on to a storage drive and had a look through some of my old website designs. It was quite sad clicking on what used to be my favourite links and finding most of them were 404s, dead and gone. I remember how interesting it was to read blogs back in the 1990s, back when you couldn't use the web and make a phone call at the same time. And then I came here and to my other blog and was nostalgic all over again but in a happier way. Because I'm now retired, hurrah, and life is a blast. 2014 has been pure dead brilliant.
I may not have posted here for ages, but I've had it since 2000 and didn't want to lose it. And then I got an email from Google saying I had to "migrate" my blogs to the blah blah blah. I followed all the clicketty buttons and ended up going round in circles. I went to the Blogger help forums and they were full of desperate people going round in similar circles. However, somehow I managed to kick a door down or perhaps break a window or two, dunno, there was a lot of swearing anyway. And stumbled on another page with a couple of tick boxes that solved everything.
So here we are! Back in the future, the year 2012, woooo! When I started blogging I still had dial-up. I actually started before Blogger, on some webspace I paid money for, imagine that! Ah, happy days.
Erm yes, I went to London, just a few days. It's always the same - I think how marvellous it will be to go away for a break, make lots of plans in my head, etc. Finally I book the time off - hugely complicated in this instance because one of my colleagues had taken voluntary redundancy and had to actually stay on longer to fill in for me. I contact friends, make vague plans, book the dogminder... and then nothing, until I suddenly realise it's only a week away and frantically book some transport, which because I left it so late turns out to be madly expensive and un-green (ie Easyjet). I've also left it too late to book anything like theatre or ballet, gah. And in fact I've gone off the whole idea and would rather stay at home.
But despite all that I did have a lovely time. I stayed with Rona, who is a great host. As well as a bed, she gave me an Oyster card and a list of cheap-and-tasty cafes, and off I went.
My first stop was Sir John Soane's museum, which I'd always wanted to see. It is wonderful, literally - full of wonders. It's hard to pick out any one thing, but for me the jaw-dropping surprise was in the tiny picture room, probably six feet square. I was peering at one of the Rake's Progress series when the attendant started unlatching one of the walls. It opened out to reveal yet more paintings - more Hogarth, some Turners, a Fuseli... and then he opened the next set of leaves. More paintings! He turned to the back wall and set about opening that - it really was astounding. The place is so small and dense with treasures they limit the number of people visiting. Because I went on a week day I didn't have to wait long, but apparently on Saturdays the queue winds right down the street.
I also visited the Tate Modern, loved the Roni Horn exhibition there, and the British Museum, where I enjoyed the Shah 'Abbas exhibition and visited old favourites like the mummies and the Assyrian panels and sculptures. One day I took to the river, boated up and down, hopping off at various points and hopping back on again. It wasn't as good as the Batobus in Paris, but still fun.
I also went on a G20 protest march, the TUC one on the Saturday. It was very decorous and uneventful, in contrast to the later demonstrations in the City, where a man died of a heart attack after being shoved over by a policeman in riot gear.
And so back to Edinburgh, where I collected a skinny old Bertie from the dogminder - he had looked particularly thrawn when I left. The other "guests" were an elderly incontinent labrador and a demented bearded collie that kept trying to hump him. I don't think B had a very restful stay. He ate a huge amount when we got home and then slept like a dead thing.
I had a burst of energy and did some gardening - mowed the "lawn", planted onions, swept and scraped moss off the sit-ooterie and scrubbed all the garden furniture. The next day it rained. Sigh. But it looks lovely. I'm growing spuds this year too.
Health news: I've been having regular blood pressure checks for a while now. The only time they've been in the normal range was when I was on holiday, so now the doctor wants me to wear a 24-hour monitor. You wear a BP cuff that auto-inflates every hour. Friends who've worn them say it makes sleeping difficult! A clinic at the hospital organises this - I should get it within a couple of weeks.
I'm pretty sure work stress is keeping my blood pressure up. It's been awful since the end of last year when the economy started going belly-up. Yesterday we had a leaving do for one of my workmates who's taken voluntary redundancy. Another one of the chaps and I went shopping with a big plastic bag full of money we'd collected for him - we got him a TomTom satnav thing and some book tokens, he was delighted. We are going to miss him so much! They've opened the book for redundancies again - sort of tempting, but there's not much work out there and I have a mortgage to pay.
I got a mug with this on it, and it's my motto now:
I got out my jam pan again today - this time to make marmalade. What a faff it turned out to be! But worth it, I think.
The first step is to get the right kind of oranges. Not navels, they're too sweet. It has to be seville oranges, which are too sour to be good for anything else. But the thing is that seville oranges are only in season for five minutes, and that brief season has never before coincided with me feeling like making marmalade or having a recipe or even the other ingredients.
So, I when I saw Nigel Slater's marmalade recipe in the paper a couple of weeks ago I tore it out and thought, I wonder if you can still get seville oranges in the shops... but didn't actually go looking for them.
Then Faye came to stay for a few days and on Saturday, a full week after I got the recipe, we had lunch at the local farm shop. And guess what they had on sale? Seville oranges. I vaguely remembered the recipe so bought 12, for the princely sum of £1.46. Obviously on a roll now, I found a bag of preserving sugar in the back of the cupboard, plus I had a couple of lemons and a good stockpile of jars.
That just left the muslin bag. Muslin - where do you get muslin these days? My one and only piece of muslin was a tiny square I got with some skin cleanser. A kitchen shop, maybe? Searches brought up all kinds of weird jelly-straining solutions and even a dainty, Delia-approved cloth (as small as my facecloth),but not plain muslin bags. Then I had a brainwave - I thought of those muslin cloths you use with tiny babies, to protect your shoulder from burped-up milk. Visited Sainsbury on the way home from work one night and bingo, there they were: five giant muslin squares for a fiver. The woman at the checkout said, "I didn't think you could still get these!"
So last night I started to make marmalade. One of the oranges had started to go off, so I threw in another lemon. First, trim the peel off the fruit and slice it up. Squeeze the juice from the pulp into a jug. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy! An hour later and I was still peeling and chopping and squeezing, hands sticky and stinging. At long last I was done and put the whole lot together in my biggest pot: peel, juice and water to make four litres, and the pulp and pips bound up in a muslin square (previously washed and rinsed).
That sat overnight. The rest would be a breeze compared with the preparation, I thought. I got up early this morning, ready to knock out a few jars of marmalade before walking the dog. Poooooooor Bertie. Once I'd decanted the whole lot into the preserving pan (you're not supposed to leave acid mixtures in it for too long I read somewhere ... though I can't find anything like that on the net) it took over half an hour to come to the boil. Then it simmered for an hour while I had breakfast. After that I was supposed to fish out the bag of pulp, let it cool and squeeze out as much juice as possible into the pan, add the sugar and boil the whole mess fast for quarter of an hour, until a spoonful set in a saucer. Ha ha ha!!!
I should have known better - in fact later on I looked up Nigel's recipe on the net and saw he'd added some extra stuff ... like that this stage could take longer than 15 minutes. A lot longer. It took forever to wrestle with the pulp-stuffed muslin (hot! hot!) and melt the sugar in, and then get the mix boiling again. By the time gotten sick of waiting for the mixture to wrinkle on the saucer and Bertie was definitely sick of waiting for a walk, the windows were running with condensation and the kitchen and I were a sticky mess.
I poured the marmalade into the jars and bolted the lids on - done! Bottled sunshine. I have to say it does taste lovely. Really tangy and fresh. And it might even set.
In other news, I went to the doctor this afternoon about my bunions - or at least the one that occasionally causes me to shriek with pain as I put in the clutch. He wasn't in the least bit interested ("The surgeon won't want to see you until it's MUCH more distorted, red and inflamed."), but did take my blood pressure (the conversation idled around from feet to knees to weight) and it turns out to be too high. High enough to catch his attention. So now I've got to go to the practice nurse (though I'd rather have a real one, ha ha) and have my blood pressure taken next week and the week after.
I didn't tell him about the marmalade.
Weather: It snowed madly in London and the south-east and now it's snowing madly up north. It has not, as yet, snowed madly in Edinburgh. We had a few flurries, followed by slush. Quite annoying.
I blogged this from the phone, but for some reason browsers don't like it and eventually the photos go away. A mystery. So I sent the photo to flickr and linked back to here.
Anyway, the walk at Blackness was a nice interlude in an otherwise fraught day.
First off, I broke a tooth. And this is complicated because my dentist "sacked" me a few years ago when he went private. I should have gone straight to a local dentist and signed up to a dental plan. But of course I didn't. I have an absolute horror of dentistry, having had awful experiences as a child at the hands of school dental nurses with slow drills and quick tempers.
But now I have to have a dentist. And because my work situation's a bit wonky and because I already pay National Insurance, preferably an NHS dentist. But dentists who are taking NHS patients are rare beasts. I turned to the NHS itself for help. The website ("NHS Lothian at your service") had a couple of numbers to ring to locate your nearest NHS dentists.
The result was the same at both numbers: it rang a few times, a recorded voice said "goodbye" and the line went dead.
So I got to work compiling lists of dentists and phoning them, starting from the one up the road and working my way out. Very cunning, those dentists. It turns out you have to have a "clean bill of dental health" before you get on a plan, ie you have to have all your teeth fixed before they'll afford you the privilege of paying up to £40 a month for any subsequent dental treatment. And the prices!! £75 just for an initial examination, without any treatment.
I phoned and phoned and phoned, getting more and more despondent as the apparent cost of fixing my tooth mounted. Finally, a cheery receptionist said, "Yes we take NHS patients." I almost fainted. The appointment's not until next month, mind you, and it is 15 miles away. But still!
I could have annoyed myself still further by doing what was on my schedule before the tooth broke: giving Bertie his weekly treatment shampoo. But I think that would have broken me. So instead we went for a nice walk at Blackness. Because it was such a nice walk, with lots of friendly dogs and walkers for Bertie to schmooze, I took longer than intended and had to race around when I got home, getting ready for work.
I needn't have bothered: there was a whole new set of roadworks in place on a major road on my route, the traffic was crawling along. This is for new gas mains, same as the roadworks that have closed off the street I work in, which means I have to do a big complicated circuit around streets choked by roadworks for the trams - and by traffic that's doing a big complicated circuit around my work street and a couple of other major thoroughfares closed by tram works. There are also various random roadworks - for example there's one little side street that's crucial to my circuit that is sometimes blocked off because of building construction work.
What with all the hurtling around earlier, I didn't prepare anything for my dinner - I like to take a salad box or sandwich or something, because the canteen food is really pretty dire. Tonight's offering was big dish of mince with a pastry top, simmering in half an inch of fat - served with chips, of course. Ick. But it seems I won't have the chance to turn up my nose much longer: the canteen staff were told today that from March it's closing at 2:30pm. Not only that, they're all being sacked and will have to reapply for a much smaller number of jobs - 13 staff, 4 jobs.
And then tonight was hard, hard work, from go to whoa. I'm on my own tomorrow as well, so it will be even harder work.
However. The moral of my day is, no matter how annoying it was, at least I'm not having to compete against my workmates for a new job (yet). And at least I didn't have to slosh around in the Hudson River after my plane crashed.
Bertie had his second treatment shampoo today. He's dim enough that he walked happily into the bathroom; but he suddenly remembered that the last time he was in there Bad Things happened, and tried to back out. There followed a mad struggle, with lots of flailing and swearing, and finally splashing. The third bath will be even more entertaining.
He's on his fourth course of antibiotics, the infection not having completely cleared up. The vet also told me to give him 1,000mg of evening primrose oil a day, so that's on order via the internet (only £18 for a year's supply, not bad!).
The vet and I had a bit of an argument over his diet. She thought he was looking a bit skinny and asked what I feed him. When I told her half a pound to a pound of meat, raw or cooked, plus as much high-quality kibble as he wanted, she tutted and said, "No, no, dogs shouldn't eat meat." Eh? "They're not designed to eat meat." I'm sorry? "They should eat dog food." We had this discussion as I was grappling Bertie on to the scales, where it transpired that he's not underweight after all. But she still insists he's not getting a balanced diet.
I explained how the last time he lost a lot of weight was before I went away on holiday, when I had to feed him dog food at regular meal times because I was training him up for life with the dog minder. There's only one brand of packet food he'll eat at all now - Nature Diet, 100% natural and of course madly expensive. Liz reported that he didn't eat at all for the first couple of days and was picky after that. He used to like Butchers - only the tripe flavour - but he's gone off that. The only kibble he likes is Judge's Choice Greyhound Maintenance (By Royal Appointment). He'll be enthusiastic about other brands for a few days, but then turn up his nose - and he'd rather die of hunger than eat Bakers Complete. He's as picky about treats: yes to Frolics and Markies; no to Gravy Bones and Winalot Shapes. He's crazy about Greenies Smart Sticks at the moment too - they're teeth-cleaning treats made with green tea ... and of course they're insanely expensive.
So, with all the effort I go to to give Bertie tasty, nutritious food, you can imagine how thrilled I was to be lectured on how he shouldn't eat meat. I had visions of a wolf in the pet supermarket, leaning on its trolley as it reads the labels: "Hmmm... carrots, rice, ok. But lamb - I don't think I'm meant to eat lamb..."
To reassure myself that I'm not going mad, I did some internet research and found that while dogs are classed as omnivores and can eat grains and vegetables (unlike cats, which are carnivores), their diet should be based on .... MEAT. The only caveat about giving fresh meat was that dogs might eat too much of it and become obese. Which is not really a problem for Bertie.
I hope everyone had a better Hogmanay than me - I've got the cold that's been doing the rounds for a few weeks now. I'm at the hacking cough stage, and I've been trying to take it easy because I've got a ticket to Handel's Messiah tomorrow at St Cuthbert's Church in Edinburgh. It's put on every New Year by the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union, and one of my work colleagues is a soprano. I've been a couple of times and it's great. Everyone brings along a picnic and you eat it in the interval. Normally it's held in the Usher Hall, but that's being renovated so this year it's in St Cuthbert's. I don't want to be that annoying person coughing through the whole thing...
Today I went to another traditional event - the Loony Dook right here in Queensferry. Normally it's at noon, but this year the tide was too low at noon so it was put off until 1.30pm (not that I realised that - I thought I was late, but in fact I was early). I read afterwards that there were about 600 dookers.
Some of the costumes were fantastic - there were pirates, hula girls, nuns, gangsters, even a Zaphod Beeblebrox. This was my favourite:
The front of his thong was "anatomically correct" - really, really funny! If you click on the photo and look at the biggest one in "all sizes" you can see the reaction of people across from me. Priceless.
I took a little movie too - spot the kiwis! There were loads of Antipodeans there. I think Loony Dooking is like running with the bulls in Pamplona.
It was seriously cold, frost on the ground - rather them than me!
Bertie had his own dooking yesterday. He has a mystery skin condition and the latest treatment involved a medicated shampoo that had to be left on for ten minutes. (I'd had the camera out in the freezing cold on a walk for a couple of hours and it steamed up when I took it into the bathroom. Tsk.)
It went a lot better than I'd anticipated. He didn't struggle too much when I dumped him in the tub and stood reasonably quietly while I wetted him down and worked in the shampoo. He did try to climb out a couple of times during the ten minutes of waiting, but on the whole was very good about it. The result was great - he's all lovely and silky smooth and soft, just like a shampoo ad! And scab-free, for now.
It's all very tedious though. At first - as reported in an earlier post - I thought there was something wrong with his back, because he flinched if you stroked him, to the point of almost collapsing. So the vet prescribed painkillers and spoke worryingly about tumours on the spine.
But then one day after his walk I took off his coat and his back was covered in a kind of dandruff. On close inspection, the skin on his back was all scabby and reddened. Plus he was nibbling away at his flanks. Back to the vet, who took skin scrapings and prescribed antibiotics. The talk was now of mange - oh dear - though the vet had her doubts because he wasn't itchy enough, the scabby bits weren't in the right place (should have been his mouth and legs) and his hair hadn't all fallen out.
As a precaution I replaced his duvet and boil-washed his bedding and jacket. I also started putting him in a T-shirt at night.
The skin scraping results came back negative for mange. The scabs were from a "bacterial infection" - a bug that dogs have on their skin all the time but that can get out of control if they're run down or elderly. More antibiotics were prescribed, a longer course this time. I also ordered Bertie a new jacket (washing the old one had stripped out all the waterproofing) and a house-coat.
Last week he finished the latest antibiotics and was still scabby, so the vet (a different one - there are two of them at the Queensferry clinic) prescribed another course, a steroid injection, plus the shampoo. Oh and she said I shouldn't put Bertie in a house-coat. "They're not designed to wear clothes," she said - though she did concede that it was ok for him to wear a coat outdoors in the subzero weather we're having. Greyhounds do need coats in the cold - they've so little body fat and such thin coats they need a bit of protection.
Despite all the inflammation and scabbiness and medication though, Bertie has been in good spirits throughout, with undiminished appetite and energy. He loves his walks, especially in his favourite parks, and people are always exclaiming, "Eleven! Really? He doesn't LOOK eleven!"
So - another new year. This one is going to be challenging for me. I'll find out in the coming month just how challenging - there's a chance I'll be laid off, but at the very best my working patterns will change dramatically and not in a good way. I'm keeping as positive as possible and counting my many blessings, but I can't help but be nervous about what the future will bring.
There hasn't been any snow to speak of here, so at the weekend I went off in search of some - and found it! Lovely thick deep squeaky dry snow, at the Hermitage in Perthshire.
Bertie was notably reluctant to stand around posing, or even to stand around waiting for me to take photos - any lingering and he was barking impatiently. It was fuhreezing! Especially if you're just wearing a coat. In other countries they are better prepared for arctic conditions.
I took Bertie to the vet this morning. He's generally in good health, but over the past week or so had developed some kind of weird back pain. He was walking fine, not limping or anything, zipping up and down the stairs, stretching, the whole works. But any time you touched his spine or flanks, he flinched. Really flinched, dramatically, with his whole body. Ow! That hurts!
If you touched a particular spot on his spine, his back leg would start scratching in reflex, and he'd sometimes half collapse. On the other hand, I discovered he appreciated a back massage - I was feeling along his spine for lumps, fearing the Big C. All his muscles were tense and shivering, but he leaned in for more back-rub.
So I took him off to the vet, which meant getting up early on a fiercely cold morning when I'd much rather have stayed in bed. I explained to Fiona that he seemed healthy enough blah blah, apart from this: and took off Bertie's coat and touched his back.
Nothing. He stood like a rock. I touched his flanks - nothing. "Oh, he's not doing it!" I babbled, as if he was supposed to start tap-dancing or speaking French. I poked and prodded, but he remained staunchly flinch-free.
So I explained, and Fiona felt along his back and confirmed that his muscles were flinching even if he wasn't showing it. I reckon he was scared to show how much pain he was in in case he was whisked off for surgery.
Fiona says it's probably arthritis in his spine, and that the muscles are tensing and hurting because they're having to hold the spine in a different way to keep it from hurting - the back-rubs help ease the muscle spasms.
So he's now going to be on painkillers long term. Anticipating this, I'd printed off a prescription form for an online vet pharmacy: the vet charges £15 for a 30ml bottle, while online it's less than £25 for 180ml. So even with the prescription fee of £7.50 it's far cheaper.
There's always the possibility that it's not arthritis but a tumour on his spine. But he's very healthy, as I say, eating well and enjoying life. So - fingers crossed it's not going to develop into anything that will spoil his fun.
In other health-related news, Faye is recovering from her op. She's more sore than she'd anticipated, so she isn't going to come up to Scotland until January, even though she says she's "bored out of my brain".
I kept up the pace today, loading the car with cardboard and polystyrene even though there was a gale raging and rain lashing down. I got a freecycle taker for the loft panels and he collected them straight away, so that was a bonus. Then I took the rubbish to the tip ... sorry, took the recycling to the community recycling centre. Actually it was pretty good - lots of enormous bins for absolutely everything, all well organised. I got lost on the way there and drove around aimlessly for a while trying to remember where it was. Then suddenly remembered my new phone has internet - and googled it! And found it! I do love technology.
I even managed to post Faye her dressing gown, and I only got her letter this morning. Whatever happened to my procrastination habit? This is kind of weird, this efficiency business.
So now I just have to find homes for the carpet offcuts and CD shelves. I'm also going to have a hard look at the sheds, see if there isn't more stuff lurking in there that could be recycled or freecycled.
Clearing out the loft seemed like such an easy thing to do. How wrong I was.
I was under the impression that there were just a few cardboard boxes up there. Oh, and that bit of carpet. And some left-over packs of laminate. And the old lamp and the CD shelves and Pop's old suitcase. And the floor panels and the old doors. And actually, there were like about a dozen cardboard boxes, big ones, and they were almost all full of smaller cardboard boxes and/or polystyrene blocks. Poor Bertie was very worried indeed as the boxes came hurtling down through the hatch, followed by packs of laminate and floor panels.
It was terribly tempting just to give up, but I plugged on, stymied only by the three old doors, which are huge and about an inch and a half thick. After I'd hurled everything out I clambered back down and spent another hour or so separating the boxes from the plastic and polystyrene and bagging everything ready for recycling. So that's it - I'm never leaving this house. I don't have boxes for anything any more.
I've also filled the shed up with the bits and bobs I'm keeping. The rest is in the hall, waiting for me to list it on freecycle. And THEN I got out the vacuum cleaner and dealt with all the fluff and dust. Incredible.
